What we leave behind

I received a lot of wonderful gifts this holiday season. One of the most meaningful is a journal my son gave me, Dad, I Want to Hear Your Story. He might have noticed that I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy and things we leave behind, especially as we enter turbulent times.

If we’re heading towards some kind of apocalypse, I know people like me typically don’t survive one. I might wind up with my DNA commingled with tens of thousands of others in some unmarked pit. All that may remain of my existence is a name in a registry in some bureaucrat’s office. That’s why I want to leave behind a record that survives if I don’t. I want people to know what it was like to live through this time. More importantly, I want to remind them we were not numbers, like the six million of my distant cousins in Europe and the millions more who perished with them. We existed, we were human, and our lives mattered.

We can’t talk about ourselves and our legacy without being accused of main character syndrome. We know the world doesn’t revolve around us, like the sun doesn’t revolve around the Earth. Still, we talk about the sun and moon rising and setting. We perceive planets going in retrograde when they’re just following their orbit. Because we are a consciousness in a physical body, we can’t help but see the world from our point of view. And our point of view is just as valid — and valuable — as…